Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

Bigger is better, and EA's second Tolkien effort is bigger in every way.

Fellowship points add another fold to the Devil My Cry-style character-building process. In The Two Towers, players could only build up their own individual character, but here, players can select to delegate those points to themselves or to the Fellowship. Fellowship points are global, so by buying them, each of the five playable characters gets the newly bought move. It's like paying things forward, and it works.

The menu system and the Skill and Experience meters are more eloquently designed and better explained than before. To gain points and the best grade possible (Fair, Good, Excellent, Perfect), players increase their rate of and quality of attacks, without taking hits from enemies. This is basically done by hacking and slashing, let's be honest, but honed, learned hacking and slashing. For example, you can Quick Attack oncoming enemies without taking a hit to increase your circular meter to full, or you can parry a flurry of arrows to achieve the same status. When full, the reward is Perfect mode, the highest rank, which only lasts for a few seconds, but provides instant kills on enemies and helps score major points.

The characters from the previous game, Legolas, Gimli and Aragorn, are familiar in look and feel. Each has the same weapon as before (long knives, axe and sword, respectively), and all have projectile attacks. Gandalf has a staff, sword and magic projectiles, and Sam has Sting, throwing knives and the One Ring. Gandalf is quite nimble for an old wizard while Sam (and later, Frodo) are less powerful, but their characters are amazingly warrior-esque after being built up.

One of the newer bonuses that players can buy is a shield of invincibility, or for Sam and Frodo, invisibility. This power grants a short period of advantage, be it invulnerability or invisibility, to get through a tough situation. On the other hand, some moves aren't so neat. Balrog's Revenge is an excellent move, but it takes perfect timing, which is difficult to master when six Uruk-Hai's, four orcs and two goblins surround your ass, all champing at the bit to slaughter you. But patience and survival skills do reward players with killer later-level moves worth using the second time around.

A handful of moves are harder and more frustrating to pull off in the midst of battle, therefore becoming less useful or downright frustrating. Holding a fierce attack for long periods of time is usually a bad idea, as there is always a swarm of orcs at hand. Likewise, triggering the invincibility move is also far more dangerous to pull off for the same reason. Also, while it makes sense to dole out the cool, longer combos later in the game, the early levels don't give players much to work with at first. The first few levels are basically filled with downright basic, boring attacks. It takes a while for the cool combo depth to kick in.

On the same subject, the level interactivity is both welcome - because it helps to better round out the game -- and in some cases, not very useful. For instance, picking up spears is slow and often results in your injury. While the use of catapults and ballistas is quick and always effective. I quickly found that in the same time I could pick up a spear and target an enemy, I could just as easily strike them asunder.

Level Design and Cameras The multiple priority level design should be familiar, but the team's attention to extras and to many details show how each level breaks free, if just for a little bit, from its cookie cutter origin. There are defend levels, follow the path levels, and some curiously unique adventure levels (Sam's Escape from Osgiliath comes to mind), but almost all are well done. Each level is created to pull you in several directions at once so that you must constantly be aware of at least two or more enemy threats simultaneously.

Whereas Gandalf's Minas Tirith Top of the Wall level reminds one of Helm's Deep: The Deeping Wall (since players constantly must kick down ladders), newly added features find Gandalf fighting off four huge Siege Towers that pour orcs onto the wall. In the King's Path, the Pelennor Fields is an awesome landscape of never-ending orcs, goblins and Uruk-Hai's. You can attack the Troll guarding the main gate (or boil him with burning fluid later), or fight to build up points. But the main goal is to get to four catapults (surrounded by enemies) to knock down a giant tower, which then creates a path onto the wall.